By D N Singh (Exclusive)
It is as such shocking that such incidents are on a repeat spree that girls or women have been made victims of acid attacks for reasons those can be described as outcomes of frustration or one-sided love affair or pure vengeance.
In the last five years, 1,362 acid attacks were reported in the country, and the rate of conviction was abysmally low. So, one can guess where lies the fault and why such perpetrators roam free with a bottle of acid to prey upon.
A news on this day has popped to the national headlines as two acid attack victims have raised the issues and have filed complaints against the attackers, after 20 years,
Obviously that raises a question as why after 27 long years? that Madhu and Rukaiya lodged an FIR when she suffered the attack in 2003.
Rukaiya Khatoon was simply 14 when she encountered the dangerous attack, Rukaiya still wonders at the mind-set of her attacker, alone pondering over why? As she sits in her house in Agra. Now she has become 35
More than two decades have passed, wounds have healed but Khatoon is still haunted by those grievous scars. She has a son who would look at her mother as she devotes most of her time after her duties at the Sheroes Hangout, a place that gave engagements to all such victims.
The tale of Madhu Kashyap, now 45, is no less shocking and she too has filed an FIR after long 25 years almost. Madhu too is employed by Sheroes Hangoutm as a few more like her together work at the Sheroes.
But why the FIRs after such huge gaps? They both did this as a lead for rest many such victims who sulk with their scars in many obscure corners. They can now also come out and do the complaints, and that way many more may follow” Madhu was quoted by a news agncy.
Sometimes the street Romeos do it or in a few cases it is within the clan when an irresistible infatuation gets better half of one’s sense of reason and get blinded by rage.
Rukaiya was a victim of such situation when she refused to marry someone in which house her own sister languished in sorrow and neglect. Then it did not take much time for her sister’s brother-in-law to make the deadly advance and threw acid on her.
Such plights never get dated as they stay with the victims life long, ripping their hearts as have become their faces.
Madhu’s case was somewhat similar. She was engaged but a boy proposed her. And her no led to a situation that the boy threw acid on her face.
Irony is that then, say 25 years back there was no stop on acid sales and today also, acid can be obtained through the rear windows of a shop creating more Rukaiyas and Madhus.
